THE TABLET, January 30th, 1954 VOL. 203, No. 5932

THE TABLET

Published as a Newspaper

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

JA NUARY 30th, 1954

N IN E PENCE

Spain and the Arab World: The Egyptians Expecting a Visit from General Franco

R e-visitin g the United States: “What Kind of Leadership . . . ?” By Ursula Branston

Overcom ing Frontiers in Eastern Europe : Nationality and states

H ow Catholic is Rome ? : The City of the Popes

Father Thurston on Ghosts : An Infestation o f Poltergeists. By Lancelot C. Sheppard

Aho Santo Compostelano : A Letter to an American Friend. By J. M. Ruiz-Morales

Dom Paul N evill, O.S.B. : An Appreciation by Dom Columba Cary-Elwes, and a

Reproduction of the Portrait by James Gunn, R.A. R o o k s R e v i e w e d : George Eliot, by Robert Speaight ; Thomas Hardy, by Evelyn Hardy ;

The Viceroyalty o f Lord Ripon, by S. Gopal ; Saint Thomas More, by E. E. Reynolds ; Stalin s Heirs, by Gordon Young ; The Holy Spirit in Christian Life, by Père Gardeil, O.P. ; The Queen’s Highway : Writings of Mother Mary Potter ; Into an Hour Glass, by Nancy Price ; The General’s Summerhouse, by Anthony Rhodes ; The Mather Story, by John Prebble ; The Prime o f Life, by John Brophy ; The Lion o f Cooling Bay, by Phyllis Paul ; The Gipsy in the Parlour, by Margery Sharp ; and The Charioteers, by Mary Renault. Reviewed by A. O. J. Cockshut, Christopher Hollis, M.P., J. J. Dwyer, K. M. Smogorzewski, Mgr. H.

Barton Brown, Isabel Quigly and John Biggs-Davison.

may make all the rest' abortive. But the Berlin meeting, the first for five years, since the drawn-out farce at the Palais Rose in Paris in 1949, merely by being held has been o f great advantage to the Russians. They have, after all, only to prevent something happening to keep people doubtful and irresolute and out o f step with one another. The Western task o f constructing defence has been much more difficult, but slowly, year by year over the last six years, a good deal of solid progress has been made, and NATO has been brought into existence. But the necessary work is only half done, when the British initiative and the call for a Conference has started currents of indecision which may well prevent the completion o f the work.

THE ILL-TIMED CONFERENCE A S soon as the Berlin Conference opened M. Molotov found himself well placed to score. The Russian use for the Conference is that it enables them to address German, French and Italian opinion. The Russian aim is to defeat any policies designed to associate Germany in defensive arrangements with any other countries. By proposing an agenda which begins with the large question o f international tension and how it may be eased, M. Molotov put the Western Foreign Ministers a t a great disadvantage if they refused so vague a first item. They have judged it the smaller evil to agree to it. But the opponents o f EDC, wherever it has not been ratified, now have a much better argument. They can say : “Wait and see what happens a t the Conference in May or June.” Indeed, a moratorium has been deftly imposed, and certainly no Government in France will now get a ratification, which would also be interpreted as a vote to wreck the Conference. It was after the ratification that a Conference might have been held, not before. Yet Signor Fanfani has announced his intention o f pressing on with ratification, and this is also the intention o f the French Government.

But when we ask why the Western Foreign Ministers have found themselves in Berlin before they have been able to conclude their defensive plans, the answer is that this meeting is a compromise between what the British Prime Minister wanted and what the Americans would accept. I t is the child of Sir Winston Churchill’s speech in May, brought to birth after nine months, but not a t all the child he was hoping to see. As we go to Press there is complete opposition of wills about the participation o f Communist China, which

In their German policy the Western Powers are in a strong position. The demand for free elections, to be held throughout the country, to a National Assembly which will draw up a constitution and negotiate a peace treaty, is reasonable. Whether such free elections in the Western sense of the word can be held in practice is another question. Such elections would involve, so it has been estimated, some ten thousand neutral observers, and it may be doubted whether the example of neutrality given by India in the Korean negotiations is a satisfactory guarantee for a really free expression of political opinion in Germany. But if the conditions can be fulfilled satisfactorily, the result will be obvious, and the June rebellion in Eastern Germany has indicated what kind of result it will be. Why should M. Molotov want to pay the price of Eastern Germany if Eastern Germany can be had anyhow, and if the chances of a French ratification of the European Defence Community are in any case so slender ?